I remember the first time I used YouTube. I was about 14 when my parents called me to come upstairs to the living room. They were huddled around our family computer watching videos. Watching videos on a computer in 2007 was nothing new or really spectacular but what made YouTube so different from anything else I'd seen before was the creators.

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Back in the day when the "Evolution of Dance" was the #1 most-watched video on the platform, Smosh, Liam Kyle Sullivan, and Ryan Higa were writing the earliest YouTube sketch comedy videos. These days they're relics of an older internet age but at the time they were revolutionary. It's because of the creators that YouTube is the online demigod that it is today.

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In 2008, Jim Zimmerlin would upload his first YouTube video. Like other folks in the early days of creator-driven web content, he had no idea what to expect after he hit the upload button. Going on 15 years later, he's amassed well over 400,000 subscribers and over 350 million total views on his channel.

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Jim's first video to go viral was pretty simple. He's said on his personal website that he spends a lot of his free time on cruises and vacations. In March 2012 he uploaded a video showing a demo of a waterslide on a cruise he took. He didn't think much about it after he uploaded it to YouTube but quickly realized he had a viral hit on his hands. The 1:17 clip quickly amassed two million views to Jim's sheer shock. Today, it is still his most popular video with nearly 100 million views.

Jim and his wife moved to Pasco from California in 2020 after he retired from PG&E after 28 years of service. He's been a radio DJ, car salesman, and he's beaten cancer. His channel is just a nice change of pace from the regular rage and pain we submit ourselves to online. It's a channel of a man living his life. He documents his cruises, gets great shots of the Tri-Cities, shows off his garden and model trains, and more. It's a nice little channel and I hope it makes you smile today.

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